Cloud9 Lockheed F-104 Starfighter and Aviano Military Airbase Scenery

By Andrew Herd (2 June 2005)

he Lockheed F-104 is one of the great conundrums of modern military aviation - an aircraft that carved its name on the history books, but at a cost that even the USAF found too great to swallow. Its sales were clouded by one of the biggest scandals in aviation history and yet many of the F-104's advocates still insist that it was one of the greatest airplanes of the Cold War. Sold in huge numbers, it equipped air forces the world over, but it was never properly tested in combat. Coming from a generation before control systems were perfected, Lockheed's mach 2.0 'missile with a man in it' was stamped with a character all of its own - and with the release of Cloud9's Starfighter, we get a ringside seat at the judgement.

The F-104 was a make or break product for Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, as the company was then known. Initially there had been hopes of big sales to the USAF, but teething troubles and a spate of accidents led to the Air Force contract being scaled back from 722 to 296 hulls in 1958. Due to failures and cancellations of other projects, the company's survival depended on selling 2500-3000 aircraft and executives knew very well that if the F-104 did not sell, widespread redundancies were going to result, so it isn't hard to imagine the pressure they found themselves working under. Some creative deals were struck. When news that $22 million in 'sales commissions' had been paid to lubricate the sales environment broke in 1975, the chairman, vice-chairman and president of Lockheed were forced to resign and the Dutch royal family nearly fell in the bribes scandal that followed. The German defence ministry only escaped stinging censure by the skin of its teeth, thanks to the fortunate conincidence of all the F-104 purchase files having gone missing; and subsequent investigations were to implicate officials in many of the other nations which had bought the plane.

The F-104 originated in a Request for Proposal from the USAF in late 1950 for a missile armed all weather interceptor. Service pilots had a very clear idea of what they wanted, which was a simple, highly maneuverable, lightweight design that could outturn, outclimb and outgun the generation of Communist jets which had given so much trouble in Korea. Although Lockheed listened to these views, its aerodynamicists found it impossible to reconcile them with a plane that had to be capable of Mach 2.0 cruise; a requirement which led to the relatively straight, short, superthin wing of the Starfighter and conditioned the remainder of the design. The wing was so thin it offered no storage space, leading to compromises having to be made over endurance and even basics like cabin pressurisation - and the airframe that resulted was so unstable that it needed a three axis stability augmentation system (SAS) fitted. Then there were problems with the engine installation and the ejector seat and to cap it all, around the time that all the wrinkles had been finally gotten out, service tests showed the F-104 only had a 150 mile intercept radius against a jet bomber approaching at 45000 feet. It also emerged that an F-104 carrying four drop tanks and a nuclear weapon could not fly supersonic and in 1961, when 49 of the USAF's Starfighters had been lost in accidents at a cost of 18 pilots killed, the service called it quits.

Having the USAF drop the plane was a major setback, but Lockheed continued to refine the F-104, leading to the widely sold G model which equipped many European air forces and had a relatively distinguished service career. This variant accounted for well over a third of Starfighter production and it was generally beefed up with a bigger tail and fully powered rudder, combat flaps and much improved avionics. In addition, the F-104G marked the phasing in of the Martin-Baker zero-zero ejection seat to replace the Lockheed C-2 unit (early F-104s actually had a downward firing seat, believe it or not) and it could pack four Sidewinders, tracking, acquiring and firing at targets using its advanced Autonetics F15A NASARR weapons system.

No introduction to the F-104 is complete without a discussion of its accident rate - the Luftwaffe was losing one a week at one time and on its worst single day, four F-104Gs and two F-104Fs went down - but if you look at the data, the F-100 actually had a worse attrition rate and the F-4 got pretty close as far as fatalities are concerned. One problem with the Starfighter was that it was a generation ahead of the aircraft it replaced, with much higher landing speeds and vastly more sophisticated flight control systems - to take an example, the flap boundary layer control was only effective down to 82% rpm and if a pilot forgot this and chopped the throttle on short final, the aircraft would roll inverted without warning. A long, flat 175-180 knot final approach was recommended and touchdown was a 155 knots minimum, extra knots being added for any fuel over 1000 lb, gusts, crosswinds and luck, leading to many landings occurring at 175 knots, very fast in those days. Then there was the spin, which was violent, disorientating and led to many high altitude losses when it followed a flameout - and finally, in moments of stress, many of the cockpit controls looked a little too alike. All in all, the F-104 demanded, and got, respect, making it ideal for a simulation and leaving FS developers a deal of space in which to exercise their imagination.

The Cloud9 F-104 package is a 51 Mb download, which I tested with the 35 Mb additional liveries pack and Service Pack 1, which is just under 10 Mb. I gather another SP is due to be released, but that won't be the end of it, as Cloud9 see the F-104 as 'work in progress' and users can look forward to receiving frequent enhancements in the shape of new variants and an absolutely fantastic new 2D panel, if the screenshots being trailed in Cloud9's forum are anything to go by. Minimum hardware requirements are a 1.5 Ghz Pentium with 512 Mb RAM and 750 Mb free hard disk space - a 2.0 Ghz Pentium with a gig of RAM is desirable.

The addon can be downloaded without payment, but once it has been decompressed into FS2004, Flight Simulator has to be started with another plane loaded - loading up the F-104 causing an instant exit to the desktop on my system. Having loaded the default 172 or something similar, the next move is to pull down the new 'addon manager' menu which has appeared, select the F-104 and click 'buy' - only at this stage will your credit card have to be extracted from its secret hiding place. Doing this requires an active Internet connection, but once completed, the F-104 will be activated and you will be able to use it.

A quick check of my system revealed a new program group with a link to a 79 page pdf format manual - which is comprehensive but could be better organised from a beginner's point of view in that it doesn't include a tutorial flight. There are some extremely helpful graphics showing how to take off and fly the approach and landing, some of which can be found in Martin Bowman's excellent 'Lockheed F-104 Starfighter', which I can recommend. Clicking the Cloud9 F-104 entry on the FS select aircraft menu immediately got my attention, because the list of variants and liveries is so long that scrolling through it risks a repetitive strain injury. You get the CF-104 with either four tanks, tip tanks, or clean; an F-104G with either four tanks, 'catamaran' AAM installation, clean, 'kormoran' antishipping missiles, twin rocket launchers, M117 bombs, tip-mounted sidewinders, or tip tanks; and an RF-104G with an Orpheus pod. Just in case that isn't enough choice, variants are offered in three different versions: a 'simplified' one where you can exceed performance limitations with reasonably impunity; an 'ordinary' version where you have to handle the plane like a professional; and an 'unreliable' version which can't be relied on to fly a circuit without something or other going tech.

Then there are the liveries. The Canadian Air Force gets eight, ranging from a service camo ship, through a bare metal 'Cold Lake', to a scarlet 'Red Indian'. I counted no less than 25 for the F-104G, taking in just about every European air force that operated the variant, from the Turks to the Norwegians, but including a NASA livery and a Starfighters team ship. The RF-104G has a single livery, taking the total to no less than 34, possibly a record - I realise that other planes have many more freeware liveries, but this is the first time I have seen so many supplied as part of a standard installation.

The visual model is nicely detailed and captures the idiosyncratic lines of the Starfighter very convincingly. As you can see, the addon is packed with fine detail and it would be possible to spend a good half hour reading all the cautions and advisory notices on the airframe. In addition to working airbrakes, tailhook and exhaust nozzle, the ram air turbine can be deployed and there is a host of animations, including a drag chute and afterburner effects, as well as the smoky trail that F-104s were renowned for painting across the sky - rumor had it you could follow one by smell alone. The canopy opens and with the engine shut down, if you assign and then hit the wing fold button, a ground power unit truck pulls up and the plane enters maintenance mode as shown above. Needless to say all the usual control surface animations are present and the gear flexes on landing.

The 2D cockpit was quite a surprise - Cloud9 having only recently put their shingle up, I was unprepared for what appeared on screen when I loaded the sim for the first time. The graphics are extremely good and while they don't quite rival the best Flight1, DreamFleet, Captain Sim and RealAir can offer, they are within spitting distance, the only real fault I could find being some blurring on the legends on the cockpit side panels. Regular readers will be aware that I am extremely critical of the sharpness of panel graphics, feedback indicating that users stare at the cockpit internals 95% of the time, and prefer them sharp. Guys, I am with you all the way.

Cloud9 have gone for an unconventional, but clever split of the main 2D panels, providing the 'flying' view, shown on the left and the 'glance down' view on the right, the latter giving you access to the switch sets on the lower panel. In addition to the standard six, the other instrument you will have to pay a deal of attention to is the engine rpm indicator, as getting the power settings right is a crucial part of flying a good approach - not to mention getting the plane back, if you fly the 'unreliable' versions.

Apart from the standard early jet engine management panel, two extra instruments you get are an HSI and a radar. The HSI is a good example of how complex the programming in the sim is, because if you do a cold start and don't allow enough time for the inertial navigation system to warm up, it won't do anything. Apart from that, it works just like the one in the King Air panel, the needle tracking NDB's when the upper left knob is up and VOR/Tacan's when it is down. The radar has switchable range and the beam can be tilted, making it ideal for doing dummy attacks on AI aircraft, although it is limited to tracking ten at a time. Bottom right there is a clutch of simicons that give access to the ground power unit (GPU) panel - used to call up the situation shown in the screenshots above the ones showing the panel - the stick, the annunciators and the side panels. There is also an angle of attack indicator, which is fairly crucial for Health and Safety reasons - if it goes red, things are about to get worse.

The side panels clearly gave the development team a few headaches as far as orientation was concerned - in a real plane these lie to either side of the pilot and all he has to do is glance down to adjust anything he needs to. The screenshots show them as they appear in the sim, demonstrating the immediate problem, which is you run the risk of getting a ricked neck trying to set radio frequencies. Even now, my lawyer is preparing a $30,000 suit against Cloud9 for work-related injuries (-: though seriously, I can't think of how else the panels could have been presented in a vertical orientation without them appearing unacceptably small on the average monitor.

If you take a look at the screenshots, you will see that the right side of the cockpit holds the radios and the left the avionics, autopilots and the SAS. The autopilot is a good example of a unit of its time, with altitude or mach hold, heading or nav hold and roll control and the sim works fine as long as you use FSUIPC and it is set up as per the F-104 manual, which fortunately doesn't recommend anything out of line with the normal FS requirements. If the pitch damper is activated and you have the stick popup active, one of the cleverer bits of programming in the sim is that you get to see the stick shaker operating as you near the stall. And while I remember, the way the sim is programmed, if you want to see all the features in action, you are best off starting from a cold and dark cockpit and getting everything lit the hard way.

Failures are a major feature of the sim - normally these are something I can take or leave, since real aircraft failures are few and far between, but the F-104 was a challenging plane to fly and for once I think the failures make the sim feel more real. If you don't like them, you can always use the 'simple' flight models and fly the Starfighter any way you want, but if you use the normal or unreliable models, things can and will go wrong. Failures are divided into two types, the first being ones that occur if you exceed performance limitations: for example, tire blowouts will happen if exceed the takeoff or landing limit of 234 knots; hydraulic failure if you drop the gear with more than 260 knots on the clock; engine compressor stalls are possible if the angle of attack (AOA) exceeds 40 degrees at less than 210 kias, producing the classic F-104 '3 bang flameout' and demanding a restart if the plane doesn't stall and spin out; and there is a long list of other stuff that can go wrong, starting with engine problems if you exceed the compressor inlet temp limit. The other type of failure is random and can affect any system, from the electrics to the hydraulics - flameouts were a particular problem in real F-104s flown above 63,000 feet and even occurred in level flight - this randomness being faithfully simulated in the addon.

The flight model is best described as complicated - but the sim flies much the way I have been told the real thing did. The key to understanding the Starfighter is that it wasn't really happy clocking less than 300 indicated and extreme caution was required at airspeeds of less than 200. It was also a plane with very tight aerodynamic limits, which the flight model reflects well - I have already mentioned what happens if you reduce power below 83% at low speed with full flap and the AOA issues, but it is easy to exceed gear and flap limits on takeoff if you don't get the climbout angle right. There are various other little gotchas, like afterburner induced yaw which can track you off the runway and if takeoff pitch exceeds 10 degrees with an airspeed of less than 250 knots, pitch-up may occur. If this sounds fun, you have probably already made your purchase decision (-: In passing, I should mention that the mach meter needle even vibrates as you near the speed of sound, simulating compressibility effects.

The virtual cockpit (VC), shown above, is active, which means that most of the switches, levers and gauges work, although it is a little dark and suffers from the usual problem of mousing not working if you move the POV too far back. In common with many of the more ambitious FS VCs, some of the legends are hard to read, but once you know where everything is you could easily use it to fly the plane, and as usual, the VC offers some advantages over the 2D panel. The sound set is excellent, including the classic F-104 blowing noise that happened at certain throttle settings and it includes full startup and shutdown sequences. Very distinctive.

Verdict? To be honest, this sim blew my socks off. I thought, 'Yeah, yeah, another F-104, why don't they do something original, like an F-4?' Then I saw the 2D panel, and I thought, 'Who are these Cloud9 people?' Turns out they are a long established team who have done a lot of work with Lago, including some very well known packages - so I thought, okaaay, and I firewalled the throttle and took off to get a feel of the thing, lifted the gear and flaps the moment I had a positive rate of climb, rolled inverted and crashed. Got to be a problem, I decided, so I did it again and the F-104 did it again. So I read the manual and this time, I got to several thousand feet before doing the roll and crash thing, but in the end I tamed the beast and had a lot of fun in doing so. No, the F-104 is not perfect, there are a few things need fixing, but none of these issues stopped me enjoying flying the sim - to take an example, if you save a flight, one of the generators switches off and half the left hand side of the panel goes down, but you can fix this with a flick of the mouse once you know where the switch is. One of the things you cannot complain about with this addon is the value for money aspect, all those different configurations and variants of the F-104 and more than 30 liveries representing extremely good value in anybody's terms. The only caveat is that newbies to Flight Simulator may find the sim tough to operate, since landing it isn't easy and it has to be flown all the time, unless you chicken out and use the autopilot.

Aviano Military Air Base

Aviano is the HQ of the US 16th Air Force and as such is the base for operations over the Balkans and northern Iraq. Historically the base had B-47s, F-100s and F-4s, but today the 31st Fighter Wing operates F-16s and F-117s out of there with support from KC-135s, E-3Bs, U-2s, MC-130Bs and a variety of choppers.

Cloud9's package is a 33 Mb download, which installs using a similar system to the F-104. The manual suggests minimum hardware requirements of a 1.5 Ghz Pentium with 512 Mb of RAM, although as we all know, the faster the PC, the better complex addons are likely to run. In addition to the airbase, the scenery includes local mesh, landclassing and corrections to the roads and railways in the area to eliminate mismatches and facilitate VFR approaches.

Aviano is packed with features: for a start various hardened shelters are included, the doors of which can be opened by tuning Nav1 to the certain frequencies; you will also come across opening gates and AI vehicles and planes. The runway has arrestor wires on it which the developer plans to upgrade to working condition in a future version, and nets that spring up to 'catch' overshooting planes - in the current version of the scenery the F-104 shoots straight through them, but Cloud9 plans to make 'em work eventually. The runway is 05/23 and is 8500 feet long, which sounds a lot until you arrive in a hot Starfighter.

A full set of approach plates are included in the manual, the field having the old-style military setup of an NDB and a Tacan. The Cloud9 F-104 has a Tacan receiver, the acronym standing for "Tactical Air Navigation" - the military equivalent of a VOR and said to be the more more accurate of the two. Military aircraft radios can interrogate Tacans to get bearing and distance information , but civil aircraft can only get bearings. FS2004 models Tacans and VORs the same way as far as I know, in an understandable economy of coding effort.

The most novel feature of the scenery is that it includes a Ground Controlled Approach. GCAs will be new to many simmers, so a brief explanation might be in order. Broadly, GCA is a method the military use to locate an approaching aircraft and talk the pilot down to a safe landing in poor visibility conditions; the military not having much choice about when they fly. The other reason for GCA is that the cockpit workload in an unstable aircraft like a fighter is phenomenally high and tired pilots need all the help they can get. A GCA comprises three major systems: VHF radio so the controller can talk to the pilot; a search radar to find the plane as it nears the airfield; and a precision radar for tracking the aircraft when it is on final approach. After first contact is made, the approach controller vectors the pilot the same way his civil counterpart would, his aim being to put the plane into the area covered by the precision radar system. At that point, communications are transferred to the GCA final controller - who watches azimuth and elevation indicators, compares the aircraft position to the glide path and tells the pilot what action he needs to take to hold the proper course and glide angle in his descent to the runway. When minimums are reached, the pilot must be able to see well enough to land visually, or he has to go around.

Do not expect to fly a successful GCA in the F-104 first time around, because it demands very high standards of flying. Following the controller's initial vectors is hard enough, given the nature of the flight model and you will need to fairly haul the beast around the turns to arrive in the 1.2 nm 'red circle' from which the GCA begins. If you do not arrive at this point at precisely 4000 feet, you will get vectored around again and if you are going too fast, you won't be able to make the 800 fpm descent rate that is needed without going high... and you will have to go around before being vectored all over again. After a great deal of trial and error, I discovered that flying the final vectors with a click of flap at 230 knots and using the autopilot to keep me at 4000 feet worked, but it still isn't easy flying the glideslope. Once you have the gear down and full flap, the best method is to leave the revs at 90% or so and control the descent using pitch alone - if you get too fast, don't forget the airbrakes and whatever you do, don't chop the throttle below 82% or they will post you back to mother in a Jiffy bag. The manual suggests turning on the 'FS visual aids' to help fly the GCA, but we wouldn't do that, would we? (-:

Verdict? Nice scenery, great place to operate the F104 from and the GCA is a blast. If you like the F-104, you will have to buy Aviano.

We will do our best to get back to the Cloud9 F-104 for another look as the simulation develops and is extended.

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